The Gent-rification of English masculinities: class, race and nation in contemporary consumption

Abstract

The figure of the English gentleman is regaining traction in British society. This retrograde celebration of a type of masculinity articulating various intersections in class, racial and national identity provides not just a reliable identity-complex for contemporary British males but also imaginative solutions to the current cultural predicaments – notably, how to be English/British in the era of globalisation. This article will unpack this reformation of the gentleman and its paradoxical appearance and position at present through two consumer objects: clothing and cars. By first conceptually outlining the national, class and racialised background of the ‘gentleman’ for the British cultural imagination, the article will proceed to analyse Jack Wills' clothing aesthetic and the recent Jaguar F-Type coupe, ‘Good to be Bad’, adverts. The article draws upon Lévi-Strauss and Jameson to conceptualise this paradoxical, mythical resurgence of gentry/gentlemanliness. By focusing on how two artefacts utilise an Americanised mythical narrative of Britishness, I claim the contemporary landscape sees the oxymoronic return of an archaic character-type refigured in a manner appropriate for an increasingly plural, multi-cultural global landscape.

Keywords:

• gentleman
• Englishness
• masculinity
• Lévi-Strauss
• whiteness
• Americanisation

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. Matthias Varul for his help in discussing some of the early ideas for this paper as well as Dr. Harshad Keval and Dr. Ben Pitcher for his helpful comments on an earlier draft.

Notes

1. To make the same point by way of exception, take the British boxer Chris Eubank: in the 1990s, his tweedy, eccentric character and modelling for up-market brands such as Versace and Vivienne Westwood appealed to various gentry characteristics but did so in a cultural climate against ‘poshness’, interestingly from a former working class, black sportsman. Also Eubank's status as a child of the British Empire, living in Jamaica during his childhood before returning to South London, embodies many aspects of post-colonial ambivalence and mimicry.

2. Incidentally, this appeal to moneyed privileged in the American preppies is precisely the logic which makes the American cast of British reality show ‘Made in Chelsea’ both culturally appropriate and possible, for not only have the American preppies retained the same moneyed distinction but the British have embraced a neo-liberal, commercial culture built around brands and fashion.